“…The genes encoding members of the ascorbate peroxidase enzyme family have been characterized in a number of plants, including pea (Mittler and Zilinskas, 1992), bell pepper (Schantz et al, 1995), spinach (Webb and Allen, 1995), Arabidopsis (Santos et al, 1996), maize (Bresegem et al, 1995), tobacco (Ovar and Ellis, 1997), strawberry (Kim and Chung, 1998), tomato (Gadea et al, 1999), potato (Kawakami et al, 2002), cotton (Li et al, 2007), melon (Cheng et al, 2009) and citrus (Kunta et al, 2010). In this study, we characterized the APX gene from banana; the cDNA sequence showed very high identity to other known cytosolic APX proteins, with the closest match to Z. mays (86%), Z. aethiopica (81%), G. hirsutum (78%) and V. vinifera (78%).…”